


No Easy Thing

by Barkour



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heroism is easy; relationships are hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Easy Thing

“I can’t believe we have to do this again.”

Mike grunted and peeled the skeletal frame of the passenger seat from its tracks. Chuck was there, hands stretched out to receive it.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “But I can’t help it! I’m a growing boy!”

Catching the frame against his bony shoulder, he staggered back a step and dropped the seat. His long, long arms unfurled; the thin synthetic cotton of his tee pulled tight across those skinny shoulders, now too wide for even his raggiest shirt. The hem curled up his belly and absently, Chuck pulled it down again.

Mike slung his legs out the opened passenger door and, catching the car frame with his gloved hands, he swung out into the smoggy day. Landing on his heels, he balanced and stretched a moment: arms popped back, legs sprawled, neck crooked first to one side then to the other. Chuck—his shagging bangs pulled up and cinched with a red hair tie borrowed from Julie—smiled shyly up at Mike, his eyes flickering as he did so.

Under his own thin shirt, Mike goosebumped from his nape all down to the warming small of his back. Chuck had been checking him out; so what? People did things like that in—relationships. His belly crawled. Mike glanced away to the toolboxes, their guts already strewn across the beat up asphalt.

Chuck took Mike’s place in the car, folding up to fit between the tracks. His left leg jutted out the car, foot rooted on the ground, and his spiny back bent. His jeans were too short now. A length of pale, hairy, bony ankle stuck out from the leg. Mike weighed a wrench in his hand and his tongue in his mouth, and as he did this, he studied Chuck out the corner of his eye. That defensive turn to his shoulders, the way Chuck ducked his head when his eyes were exposed, how he bit his lower lip as he measured the tracks — Mike wanted to bundle Chuck up. Smooth his hands, gloved or—not gloved, his hands _bare_ —down Chuck’s back. Chuck wouldn’t appreciate the swaddling urge. Mike was working on that, he _was_ ; it was only— He didn’t know how else to translate that knotting in his chest, the churning in his gut.

As he looked at Chuck, bent to measure, in profile, Chuck’s face thick with freckles and neck knobby and ears sticking out from his head, Mike thought, if not swaddling, then— He could kiss Chuck’s ear. Ear lobe. The soft corner of his jaw where it hooked north and tapered just behind that ear lobe.

Chuck scratched at his neck, and Mike turned back to the wrench. He didn’t even know why he’d grabbed a wrench. Frowning, Mike tossed it down.

“Aw, man.” Chuck sighed. “Almost out of leg room…”

Mike breathed in deeply and—shoving it down, shoving it away—he came back to Chuck. Throwing his arms out, one along the top of the opened door and the other across Mutt’s roof, Mike braced his legs and stooped to peer into the car. Chuck was frowning down at his digital screen and, through that, at the tracks. Slouched like that with his too long legs all akimbo, he looked like a clown.

“C’mon,” Mike said. “We can figure it out.”

Chuck shook his head, blond hair scattering, that little bangs pigtail bobbing, too. The tie had a pink, plastic cat charm sewn onto it. Chuck batted at it. Absurdly, Mike felt as though he’d downed a baker’s dozen of Jacob’s okra-mayonnaise muffins. Something warm and wriggling burst inside him. Maybe shepherding Chuck out to help him work on Mutt hadn’t been such a great lazy date idea after all.

“I think she’s just out of room,” said Chuck. “I guess I don’t really _need_ more leg space.” He considered his left leg, still sticking out from the car. His knee was a sharpened lump, inelegant and, beneath his jeans, probably bruised from knocking it all the time.

It was odd. Zane’s bots, the corporation’s foot soldiers and vast resources, yet it was Chuck’s lean and graceless inner thigh clad in denim that dried Mike’s throat and curled his tongue. Mike gripped the car door, his palms sweating in his gloves.

“I, uh,” said Mike.

Chuck looked up at this and Mike stopped.

Chuck’s forehead was pale—pasty, even—and sprinkled with small, brown freckles. A very faint line of sweat traced his brow. His eyes were dark, ever a surprise. Mike’s thumb bit into the cracked window, fitting through it. He wanted, with excruciating intensity, to wrap Chuck in a blanket and hold him close. The logistics of such occurred to him, suddenly, in detail: Chuck’s neck chilly and bony under his fingers as Mike tucked the blanket in, the bumpy length of his spine curving beneath Mike’s hand as Mike drew him near, Chuck laughing—breath hot—in Mike’s ear.

Now, here, Chuck shook his hair again, blinked, and smiled. “Uh. Mike? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said Mike. “I’m—I’m great. Thanks for … asking.”

Chuck squinted at him. “You’re … welcome? I guess? Is worrying about you something I’m not supposed to do now?”

“No, that’s cool, I just—” Mike hung his head. Eyes squeezed shut, bangs sweeping across his brow, Chuck still there— He sagged. Mutt’s roof was day-warmed against his forehead.

A hesitant touch: Chuck reached for Mike. Chuck’s fingers settled sweetly on Mike’s chest, his little finger just short of that cramped and quiet place where Mike’s heart beat and beat and beat. Mike allowed himself to look again.

“Look,” said Chuck, “um, I’m not really good at this whole—you know, this—” His voice dropped; so, too, did his eyes. “The boyfriend thing.”

Mike swallowed. A sort of calm came to him then, a kind of assurance. He wasn’t alone in this.

“Me, too,” said Mike. He crooked a smile at Chuck.

Chuck’s face twitched; something like an answering smile pulled at his mouth, then faded. He’d that look on his face, the grim and wavering certainty that meant he’d made up his mind, the look that preceded an act of bravery.

“Hey, Chuckles,” Mike began.

On Mike’s chest, Chuck’s fingers spasmed. He grasped Mike’s shirt tightly, his tooth-bit nails catching skin even through the sleek synthetic cloth. When Chuck yanked, Mike, descending, smacked the side of his head on the overhang, swore, stumbled, and landed with his left arm thrown out by Chuck and the right buckled between them. Chuck’s lips, thin and dry, were warm upon his chin. Mike, instinctively touching his throbbing head, drew in a sharp breath.

“Oh,” said Chuck, “wait—shit—” and he leaned up out of his folded seat and kissed Mike—lips just off, lips so dry, his kiss too flat, too firm—perfectly. Mike’s eyelids fluttered. He pressed into Chuck’s lanky embrace, chasing after that slight, burning contact. Chuck began, helplessly, to chuckle. As he laughed, he withdrew, just so, not, Mike thought, meaning to; when Chuck determined to do something, he did it. Mike pressed sucking kisses unevenly to Chuck’s lips, spattering touches that made Chuck laugh all the harder and all the higher.

“Wait,” said Chuck, “Mikey—Mikey, my leg’s stuck—I think it—”

“Hey,” said Mike as he nuzzled Chuck’s cheek, “Chuckles—” and he licked up another laugh.

“Ha,” said Chuck, “ha ha ha ha—” and then he did giggle even as he punched Mike square in the arm.

“Hey, Chuckles,” Mike said again, trying for Chuck’s ear and catching the corner of his eye as Chuck turned, “I like your legs.”

“No, really, it’s stuck in the—”

Chuck grunted and then gasped, startled, as they fell back together. Mike, winding his arms about Chuck, had gathered Chuck to him but with too much sudden strength. With a yelp, Chuck tumbled backwards and brought Mike down with him. All of Chuck’s ungainly boniness pressed against Mike and, helpless, Mike pulled at him.

“Ow!” said Chuck. “The gear shift! Mutt hit my head! Hey, my leg’s unstuck—”

Mike cradled Chuck’s head and mouthed at that lobe, even as Chuck craned his head back to glare at the gear shift. “Careful with my car. This pretty lady’s my baby.”

“Seriously?” Chuck’s head snapped back down. “I’m _right here_ and—”

“You come with me,” Mike assured him.

“Thanks,” said Chuck. “I feel so much better now that I know I’m a car accessory.”

“I didn’t say that.” Mike rested his head on Chuck’s long shoulder. Chuck’s shoulder blades worked beneath Mike’s cupping hand, and Mike pulled him closer still, till their chests were flush together and Chuck’s every rapid breath brushed Mike. “You’re my boyfriend. That means you ride with me.”

“Oh,” said Chuck. “But I already rode with you—”

“Now you ride with me and Mutt because you’re my boyfriend,” said Mike.

Chuck subsided, at last relaxing into the embrace. His chest was warm against Mike, his legs restless. Mike slipped his knee between Chuck’s shifting, wandering, forever growing legs to keep at least the one leg near. Chuck touched his thumb to Mike’s head, where he’d banged it on the roof coming down. His fingers framed the blocky curvature of Mike’s skull, fingertips gentle in Mike’s hair.

“Sorry.”

Mike smiled. His eyes had closed again. Chuck’s breath drifted across his cheek, to his ear. Awkwardly, Chuck moved again, his hips twisting as he turned to fit the shape of Mutt’s cavity.

“You made it up to me. Anyway.” Mike shifted comfortably. His legs stuck out, but even the bared tracks digging into his side weren’t much of a bother to him, not then, with Chuck calm—more or less—and curled beside him. “I’m tough. You can’t take me down that easy.”

Chuck made a wondering noise. “I don’t think it was really that hard.”

Mike laughed into Chuck’s neck. “No,” he said, “it really wasn’t.”

One by one, Mike’s fingers wandered down Chuck’s knurled spine, mapping each rounded vertebra through that threadbare shirt. With every careful caress a little more of the stress so innate to Chuck leeched out, till even the constant twisting of Chuck’s legs as he fought to find some more comfortable position gave out and he was finally, finally still against Mike, finally there.


End file.
